The Doll’s House (4 page)

When he met Rosa he couldn't believe his luck that she was unattached. So bright, ravishingly pretty, sexy, loving. He'd cast her into the role of wife and mother and swept her into marriage.

She was charming with people; the senior partner's wife had singled her out. Rosa didn't make other women jealous. In spite of her looks she posed no threat and instinctively they knew it. She wasn't interested in flirting. He thought furiously, she wasn't interested in anything but her career.

The seventeenth for a week. He wasn't going to say anything, but the nineteenth was their wedding anniversary. She'd be away on her course, too busy to spare him an evening. Too busy to remember that on that date, five years ago, she'd promised to love him and share his life.

He'd bought her a pair of diamond earrings. He'd booked a night at a famous country hotel just outside Windsor and planned to surprise her on the morning. James never forgot birthdays or anniversaries. They mattered to him because quite often dates like that had been forgotten when he was growing up.

‘It was such a good party,' Rosa said as they drove home. It was nearly midnight and London was quiet, the streets empty of traffic. ‘She does everything so well,' she went on.

‘Yes,' he answered. ‘Joyce is a great asset. He's lucky this time round.'

‘You never told me he'd been married before.'

‘I didn't know her. She went off with someone else, I think.' His tone closed the subject.

Rosa was driving; he didn't want to risk it after drinking brandy.

‘Did you enjoy it, James? You seem a bit tired, darling.'

‘It was good fun …' He yawned and let the sentence fade.

He hadn't remembered their anniversary. Rosa felt light-headed with relief. He would have said something. Afterwards she'd remind him and think of something special to make up for it. After all, their second year he'd had to go on a trip to Hong Kong …

‘Well, I thoroughly enjoyed myself,' Rosa said. ‘They were terribly nice to both of us. I'm sure you'll be offered the partnership. Why don't we go and celebrate?' He turned to look at her.

‘Why don't we go to Annabel's for a drink? It's not that late, it's only ten past twelve. It'd be fun.'

She was smiling at him expectantly. She hadn't remembered the date. She'd spend their wedding anniversary with her Foreign Office friends. She was so unaware of what she'd done, he could have hit her.

They used to go to the chic night-club twice a week when they first met. Drink champagne and dance together; it was their foreplay before going back to his flat to make love. But not now.

He settled back and closed his eyes. He said, ‘Sorry, Rosa, but I've got a hell of a lot of work tomorrow. We'll do it another time.'

When they got home he went upstairs without his usual nightcap and turned his back on her when she got into bed.

2

Hermann Rilke let himself into the apartment. It was different from the spacious, comfortable duplex on Potsdammen Platz he'd shared with his mother for the last fifteen years. But the accommodation ended with the job and his pension didn't run to more than a modest three-bedroomed third-floor flat on the Eser Strasse. It was a noisy street in an unfashionable suburb of what used to be East Berlin, and his mother hated it. She complained about the central heating, the stairs, the surly attitude of the caretaker. And, of course, the loss of the official car. Rilke made excuses. She was old, she wasn't prepared for the drop in their living standards. He didn't mind so much, he was ascetic by nature. He had simple needs. But he minded for his mother. Even when she blamed him he was patient.

She heard the front door open and called out to him.

‘Hermann?'

‘I'm here, Mutti,' he called back.

He went into the sitting room, hanging his jacket on a hook in the front hall. He was very tidy. His mother had brought him up to be neat and he was obsessive about order. In the old days there was hell to pay if any object on his desk was a centimetre out of line.

He bent down and kissed his mother on the cheek. She had white hair and she smelled of face powder and cologne. That smell was his earliest memory of her when she held him as a boy.

‘There's a letter for you,' she told him. ‘Came by messenger. It's over there.' Rilke took up the envelope and saw that it was addressed with his name and his old rank.

‘What is it? Who's it from?' His mother always wanted to know everything.

‘I don't know,' he answered. ‘I'll open it and see.'

‘I suppose you didn't get the job?'

‘No,' he admitted. ‘They wanted a younger man.'

He'd trained as an accountant before he joined the Security Services. Sometimes she wished he'd never changed careers.

‘I don't know how we're going to manage if you don't get something soon.'

She had bright blue eyes and they focused angrily upon her son. What a fool to get himself dismissed from that wonderful job in the Ministry. Losing their nice apartment, the car, all the privileges that made life so comfortable. Now nobody wanted to employ him. The world was so changed since the two Germanies had merged into one nation. And not for the better in Frau Hilda's opinion. The stability, the discipline had gone. Now it was anarchy, with people running round doing and saying anything they liked … and how rich those Westerners were. She would always separate them in her mind. And her son had been such a devoted servant of the East German State, he couldn't fit into the new system. That's what he'd told her. He couldn't compromise his ideals.

Not realizing the consequences, she'd agreed with him. Now she blamed him. He was a good son and he'd always looked after her, but she still scolded him as if he were a child.

‘What's the letter say?' She raised her voice, demanding an answer.

There was no signature on the single sheet of paper. Just a code word. His sallow face had become even paler.

‘Someone wants to see me,' he said.

‘A job? Decent money?'

‘It doesn't give details,' Rilke answered, taking his time, not listening to her.

He read the letter again. ‘Contact me at Hotel Prosser if you are interested in a substantial sum of money. My room number is eight-seven. Between six-thirty and nine this evening.' And the code word at the bottom: ‘Freedom'. He had reason to know it. Only the British with their unpleasant sense of humour, would have given such a name to that particular operation.

‘Well, it must say something,' his mother insisted.

‘I've to ring them this evening.' She looked irritated and he compromised. ‘It mentions good money.'

‘Then take it, whatever it is,' she snapped at him. ‘I won't last another winter in this wretched place. I had one cold after another from January on. I'd like a cup of coffee, Hermann. I was too tired to make myself lunch.'

‘You mustn't miss meals,' he said anxiously. ‘You know it's bad for you.'

‘Bring me some biscuits then,' she said. ‘And don't forget to make that call!'

She drank the coffee and ate the sweet chocolate biscuits. He'd gone into the hall to telephone. She wouldn't hear anything.

He came back and said, ‘I'm going out for a while. I'm meeting someone. I'll be back in good time to make your supper. So don't you worry. I'll tell you if there's good news when I come home.'

She reached out a hand and squeezed his affectionately. She smiled up at him.

‘You're a good boy, Hermann,' she said. ‘It's about time you had some luck.'

Peggy Oakham looked at him across the kitchen table. He'd been at home for nearly three weeks and she didn't know how much longer she could stand it. She'd set the cereal, orange juice and toast on the table and he'd opened the morning paper. She'd kept busy, and managed to slip away and see her friend a few times, but it was nerve-racking, having Harry at home all day. He did nothing so far as she knew but read, watch television and make phone calls. He hadn't mentioned getting a job.

She buttered toast for herself and thought how miserable she felt. Ten years of misery. He wasn't deliberately cruel; he just treated her as if she was the worst mistake he'd ever made. They'd nothing in common, she realized that now, but when they first met he'd seemed such a sexy man, with a nice voice and lovely manners.

She'd had a lot of boyfriends. Working in a restaurant made it easy to meet men. She let Oakham pick her up and take her out. It wasn't long before she went to bed with him. She was a romantic girl who always bracketed sex with being in love, even when it was short-lived. He was different. He dressed differently to most of the men she knew. He had a job in a Ministry, she wasn't too sure what he did, but it was important and he had to travel abroad a lot. They married very quietly in a register office. She'd been disappointed about that, she'd imagined a white wedding with bridesmaids and a white Rolls to take her to the church, but he'd been married before and he didn't want that sort of thing. She finished her toast. His paper rustled as he turned a page.

It was the first wife that started the trouble. She was jealous because he wouldn't talk about her. He kept her private, and it made Peggy feel angry and left out. It wasn't her fault she'd died. He wouldn't talk about that either. If he still minded, then he couldn't love
her
, she reasoned. She had begun to nag, to pick at the subject like a sore.

And then one day they had a row and she went too far. Oakham had started to shake her. He shook her till she screamed.

And then he said, ‘You ever say anything like that about Judith again and I'll break your bloody neck.'

He'd never been violent again. He'd just stopped sleeping with her and put the barriers up. So she'd looked round for comfort. She needed it. She couldn't live in that vacuum. She was a warm person, a human being, not like him.

And over the years she got careless. If he knew he didn't mind. He didn't care enough to mind, and that hurt too. I hate him, Peggy thought. I really do.

She said, ‘Are you going out today?'

He went on reading the paper for a moment and then looked at her over the top.

‘Yes. I'll be away for a day or two. You won't mind that, will you? Give you time to play some bridge.'

She had a sympathetic girlfriend who covered for her when she was seeing the current boyfriend. She'd say, ‘I'll be round at Madge's, she wants me to make up a four.' Once, when Harry checked up, Madge had said brightly, ‘We're just in the middle of a rubber – Peggy'll call you back.' Harry knew what she was doing and it wasn't playing cards. And Peggy knew that he saw through the lie. She went pink.

‘Why didn't you say anything? Where're you going?'

The paper was folded and put down.

‘To Suffolk,' Harry answered. ‘I've heard of a job.'

Now the pink had turned to an angry red.

‘Suffolk? What sort of a job? Why do you never tell me anything? I'm not moving to bloody Suffolk.'

‘I haven't asked you to,' he remarked. ‘Don't start shouting, Peggy. My cousin Liz told me about it. It sounded rather interesting.'

Cousin Liz; she bristled, remembering the snobbish cow in the big house who'd looked down her nose at her when they were introduced. His family had made her feel small, she thought bitterly, measuring her up against the first wife, putting their noses in the air.

‘Well, that's nice for you,' she said. ‘Never mind about me. What sort of a job?'

She was on the defensive, hating to ask, but the money was important … the pension was a joke and she didn't even know how much redundancy he'd got.

‘Catering,' he answered. ‘There's a job in a local hotel. I'm going up to see it and stay with Liz and Peter. I knew you wouldn't want to come.'

‘Stay with your stuck-up bloody relatives? No thank you! What do you know about hotels? It sounds a waste of time. If you want to go on a jaunt, why don't you say so? Catering!' she sneered, reaching for the coffee pot.

‘If I take it,' he ignored the jibe, ‘it wouldn't suit you to move, would it?'

She snapped back, ‘No, too right it wouldn't,' and then felt he'd tricked her into saying it. ‘Why don't you look for something round here? Go down to the Job Centre,
do
something instead of sitting round all day? Oh God, Suffolk, I ask you!'

She pushed her chair back. She didn't want the coffee, she didn't want to sit there trying to pierce the armour-plating. She couldn't rile him, or hurt him.

She stood by the table and said suddenly, ‘Why did you marry me?'

He was looking at her and he shook his head. ‘I honestly don't know. Look, I'm going in about ten minutes. Nothing may come of it, so don't work yourself up. I'll let you know when I'm coming back. I don't want to muck up your social engagements.'

He left the kitchen.

‘You shit,' she said under her breath and started stacking the dirty breakfast china. Her eyes had filled with tears. I'll ring Dave the minute he's gone, she told herself. We'll go out somewhere and have a meal and come back here … ‘The shit,' she whispered again, and wiped her eyes.

He packed lightly; how often he'd chucked a few things in a bag and flown off, or gone with nothing but what was on his back … under the wire, over the Wall … now he was making the trip for himself. He left the house without seeing his wife. She'd be on the phone to the lover before he was halfway down the road. It was a lovely day and he whistled as he drove to Heathrow. It was going to work out. He was confident, excited. Jan had called him the day before. It was all set. Geneva was the meeting place. He had booked on the eleven o'clock flight. For a moment his thoughts turned to the sordid squabble in the kitchen. She'd fallen into the trap so easily. She wouldn't move to Suffolk. She'd said so, and there'd be no change of mind when he put the terms in front of her. He would be generous. She could have the house and the rest of his savings. He didn't feel mean towards her, just a huge, wearying indifference, with the faintest tinge of guilt because he'd married her in the first place. She'd have settled down with a different man, maybe cheated once or twice, she was very oversexed, but with children she'd have made the best of it. No children for him. He'd been firm about that. A widow was bad enough, but he wouldn't leave any orphans … thank God, as things had turned out.